CD OF THE WEEK

SHYSTIE Diamond in the Dirt Polydor

Make room for the lady. Hip-hop has always had an ambiguous relationship with the female sex (hell yeah, when it comes to providing eye candy for the video; hell no, when it comes to listening to their lyrics) so only the very strong survive in this game. By the sounds of her racket, Chanelle Calica plans to stick around for some time to come. She seems more intent, too, on forging her own identity, not interested in being a little Missy here or a little Dynamite there. While Diamond in the Dirt could be viewed as a gender retort to the roughneck rascals and scoundrels who dominate streetwise UK garage-hop (though she's more than capable of swapping savage licks with them, as Dizzee Rascal found out), the wonderfully named Shystie seems happier putting down her own markers. To move her schtick from the underground to the mainstream, the rollicking young garage MC from the badlands of Hackney spits her wibbly-wobbly turbo-powered rhymes over effortlessly poppy melodies and sleek, bulletproof hip-hop lines. She can do lovely (Make It Easy is elevated by a lovely wash of The Walker Brothers' Make It Easy On Yourself), rough (Gutter hits you right between the eyes), funny (Questions) and sweet (both the star-spangled Unfinished Bizzness and the tender Step Back). Much to admire and much, too, for others to copy. 
www.shystie.com
Jim Carroll